Ken Paxton Flew to Iceland With His Mistress. Trump Just Handed Us Texas.
Indicted. Impeached. And now jetting to Reykjavík with the mistress. Trump picked the one Republican who could lose Texas—and James Talarico is ready.
by Cliff Schecter
Much like his moral exemplar Donald Trump, it’s still sometimes hard to fathom Ken Paxton actually exists.
The grotesque, grifting MAGA Senate candidate with the self-control of a masturbating bonobo seems to want to get caught living his best 1970s leisure-suit life. So this time… well, why don’t I just let the fine folks at Yahoo bring you up to speed on just the latest trashy behavior from Texas-toast Ron Jeremy:
Texas Senate candidate Ken Paxton was spotted vacationing in Iceland with Tracy Duhon, a woman alleged to have had an affair with him, even as he campaigns on "Christian values" in one of the nation's most closely watched Senate races.
The San Antonio Current reported that the video showed Paxton and Duhon at an airport preparing to fly to Reykjavik, Iceland, a popular luxury travel destination.
Duhon is one of multiple women with whom Paxton has been accused of having affairs in recent years. Paxton's wife, Texas state Sen. Angela Paxton, announced last year that she was filing for divorce from the Texas attorney general "on biblical grounds."
At the time, Paxton was already under scrutiny over an alleged affair with Laura Olson, which surfaced during his 2023 impeachment proceedings. During those proceedings, Paxton was accused of pressuring a real estate developer to hire Olson…
Ken Paxton, one of the few people to genuinely look like his personality
Four months and change.
That’s all we have left in this election cycle. Can this porn-theatre-floor of a man not keep it in his pants for just four months as he pretends to be a “man of God?” Or anything other than some newly discovered carbon-based STD?
Once you know that Paxton allegedly kept a separate apartment in Austin so he could meet his Uber-driver girlfriend without the missus catching on—back before the wife had to 86 their marriage “on biblical grounds”—it’s easy to get how Paxton fits in so well with 90 percent of the GOP in 2026. Or the leading lights of the predator-based life-forms knowns as MAGA.
And it’s not surprising this is the man Trump endorsed in a Republican Senate primary runoff. Over the incumbent. Who had a much better shot of holding onto the Senate seat. And that Paxton ultimately beat him.
Trump. Hegseth. Lutnick. The lot of ‘em now define a party possessing all the values of a Chihuahua humping your leg.
Though Trump is allegedly the President of the United States. Who—at least if our Constitution is to be believed—needs Senate Republicans to confirm judges, defend his cabinet of lickspittle loyalists from oversight, and rubber-stamp whatever the Heritage Foundation slides under the door on a Sunday night. But nobody ever accused him of having brain cells to spare.
So Trump endorsed this sky-high pile of detritus. Yes, he decided the single most important thing he could do that day was take a flamethrower to a competitive Senate runoff with incumbent John Cornyn. And supported a guy who hops aboard planes with mistresses for all the press (and independent voters—who hate Trump and Republicans by historic numbers) to see without a second thought as to what this might do to his candidacy.
Trump decided to do this because he is exactly like Paxton. Two pea-brains in a pod.
Trump doesn’t do strategy. Or common sense. Or thoughts that follow in a logical chain in our space-time continuum. His goal was not, and has never been, to win elections. His goal was, is, and always will be, some combination of self-indulgence and vengeance.
Here, Trump couldn’t get over the fact incumbent Republican Senator, John Cornyn—a man whose Senate career one might consider an extended tribute to Seinfeld, in that it has been about absolutely nothing—once uttered a few not-so-nice words about Trump’s 2021 coup attempt. So Cornyn, by Trump logic, had to be put down. And Paxton—the slick-as-Deepwater-Horizon, eternally-indicted, side-apartment-maintaining, election-overturning Attorney General of Texas—was the man-esque creature to put him in the ground.
Folks. Folks.
Let’s take a jaunt through who Ken Paxton actually is. Bear with me, the man is the War and Peace of sleaze.
That’s how James Talarico (more on him in a second), the Democratic nominee taking on Paxton, put it. I’ll just give you whole the list of what this meat on a stick, Paxton, has accomplished since he has became Texas Attorney General in 2015:
• indicted on three counts of securities fraud, charges that bounced around the Texas court system for the better part of a decade, like Trump’s head in the Oval Office as his eyes keep shutting and opening as he receives an important briefing;
• federally investigated by the FBI for abuse of office, after his own top staff accused him of using his AG’s office to do favors for a campaign donor named Nate Paul, in exchange for what those staff members described as bribes;
• impeached by the Texas House of Representatives—the Republican-controlled Texas House—by a vote of 121–23, with every Democrat and a clean majority of his own party voting against him, on charges including bribery, disregard of official duty, and constitutional abuse;
• acquitted by the Texas Senate after a campaign of intimidation against the Republicans who voted to convict;
• revealed, in the course of his own impeachment, to have maintained a separate Austin apartment so he could carry on an affair with a former Uber driver who had conveniently been placed in a sweetheart job at the donor’s company;
Truly impressive. Ken Paxton, breaking bad since at least 2015.
sponsored
Here’s the thing about a story like Ken Paxton’s little Icelandic love-jaunt: how you heard about it—or whether you heard about it at all—depends entirely on who you let tell it to you. Turn on MSNBC and it’s wall-to-wall. Flip to Fox and, funny thing, crickets.
A man running for the United States Senate gets filmed boarding a plane to Reykjavík with his mistress, while his wife divorces him “on biblical grounds,” and half the media ecosystem comes down with sudden-onset amnesia. That’s not an accident. That’s a choice. And they are betting you never notice what got left out.
Which is exactly why I use Ground News.
You type in “Paxton”—or Trump, or Hegseth, or whichever member of the predator class stepped in it this week — and it drops every outlet covering that story onto one screen. Left, right, and the ones pretending to be neutral. It shows you each source’s bias rating, who owns it, how factual it’s been, and—my personal favorite—the Blindspot: the stories one side is flat-out burying. You want to see hypocrisy hidden in plain sight?
Ground News hands you the map. So do yourself a favor. Go to ground.news/blue and save 40% off the Vantage plan—their best one, the whole toolkit.
Forty percent, because you read this newsletter.
See the whole board.
Then, like I always tell you, decide for your own damn self.
Nonetheless, Paxton still skated when he barely survived his impeachment at the hands of his own party. And got to remain the Attorney General—the highest law enforcement officer in Texas. And became Texas GOP Senate nominee with help from President cankles. And now is either tied with, or losing to Talarico—depending on the poll—in a state Democrats haven’t won statewide in over three decades.
None of this stopped Paxton from getting on a plane with the mistress—one of the ones that caused his wife to leave him “on biblical grounds.” As he runs for the Senate, laughably, as a “Christian.”
You can’t make this shit up. I have been a paid professional in the field of political consulting—strategy, ads, public relations, research—on probably 300 races, and I can’t make this shit up.
Ted Cruz—the man who flew to Cancún while his constituents froze to death, and came within 2.5% of losing his seat to Beto O’Rourke, also thought this endorsement was a good idea. Because of course he did. Ted would literally throw his momma from a train for a millimeter more power.
But then there’s a man whose tweet I shared above. He’s named James Talarico.
An eighth-generation Texan, a former public-school teacher in San Antonio, a Presbyterian seminarian who quotes scripture without sounding like he’s auditioning for it, and a four-term Texas state representative who has spent his entire political career building an opposition to—I am quoting his own campaign language back at you here—“the billionaire mega-donors and puppet politicians who have taken over Texas.”
That is not branding. That is the predator class he is plainly naming. In Texas. By a man who has spent his career fighting it on the ground.
Talarico’s the one who didn’t get on the plane with one of seemingly 127 mistresses and the dumbfounded look of a Dukes of Hazard character—I’m going with Roscoe P. Coltrane—as the press snapped pictures of the doofus and the mistress.
He raised $27 million in the first quarter of 2026. $27 million. In a single quarter (we don’t know second quarter numbers yet). More than double what Colin Allred raised in the same period in 2024. More than four times what Beto O’Rourke raised in the same period in 2018. In Texas.
Want more polling? Talarico is at plus-10 net favorable. Paxton is at minus-9. Among Latino Texans, he leads Paxton by 27 points. Trump won Latinos in Texas 55-45 (but has cratered since).
Now tell me, knowing all this, that Paxton, a slightly more evolved mutation of the clap, shouldn’t be doing everything humanly possible to improve—not worsen—his reputation?
We have a seriously talented Democratic candidate. With a serious campaign. Supported by the kind of money and voters and excitement you can’t just snap your fingers and create. And the the kind of moral fiber and mental agility that doesn’t go climbing on planes with mistresses for all the world to see.
But much like Trump, Paxton couldn’t find fidelity without three Google Maps and a Sherpa. And so it goes.
Sure, Trump has neurons that run on lust and grievance. A fortress of platitude in his cerebral cortex we’re all forced to inhabit like hostages—passengers in the world’s worst Lyft ride.
But Trump had some advantages in 2016 Paxton does not have. Charisma. Fame. And an electoral college—that much like the electrical grid during winter and summer under Gov. Greg Abbott—is nonexistent in Texas. Paxton can’t sneak around an ample popular-vote loss. And with his impeachment in supermajority GOP Texas, he’s proven scores of Republicans hate him, and don’t fear publicly professing so as they do with Trump.
But, to give Paxton some credit, he sure has the grievance part down. This is the lane where the predator class as a whole is doing its best work.
Musk fired NASA contractor leadership because he was insulted at a dinner. Thiel torched his own portfolio companies when their CEOs decline to be sufficiently fascist. Bessent leaks on Hegseth, Hegseth leaks on Patel, Patel leaks on whoever looks at him sideways in the West Wing this week—or in the bushes outside the building at beer o’clock each night.
They eat their own. The predator class is not a coalition. It is a feeding frenzy with a flag and a cross.
Trump, by picking this lout, handed Democrats a plausible path to 51 Senate votes (I’d argue 53-54, if we don’t f-k it up). And we need 51 senators if we’re going to hold Nuremberg-style hearings for every member of this administration.
This is not metaphor, btw. Nor aspiration. We need hearings. Subpoenas. Sworn testimony. Cells. Big ones. To lock them all up.
It cannot happen with 47 votes. Or 49. It can only happen with 51—and James Talarico is likely one of those 51 votes, because even in the heat of a battle with only a few months left, Ken Paxton is such an ignorant slut he can’t keep himself off an airplane with the mistress.
This is a test of the democratic emergency broadcasting system. Only a test. Donald Trump handed us a gift. The only remaining questions are whether Democrats are too institutionally polite to open it. Or too artificially divided now that we’ve decided for some reason to nominate a few candidates who hate swaths of their own voters.
Open your gift Democrats. Open. It.
One more time for the cheap seats: Ken Paxton allegedly kept a separate apartment in Austin so he could meet his Uber-driver girlfriend without the missus catching on. He thought he could sneak on a plane with yet another mistress. Not a Qatari-gifted plane, but still.
That plane is the entire 2026 Republican project—hypocrisy hidden in plain sight; paid for by all of us; trying to conceal the corruption of abusive men who spout bullshit on tap.
Snakes on a plane.
Well, the landing gear’s down. The door’s open.
Time to tell these MFing snakes to get off our MFing plane.
These women obviously have zero Self respect and No self esteem!ICKKKK!!!!!!
This article put it all out there as it is. Yes, the Democrats Mr. Nice Guy image has to go with these odious, lying malignant animals. Rather than the childish names Trumpers believe to be clever, Democrats just need the pictures and videos of this lot of vipers being who they are. As Hinojosa has done, launching billboards of Abbott's dealings for self profit. All listed as performed by him. Time to end the thievery and fill the prisons with these scums.